Many more seats would be open on the metro if some liberal environmentalists had their way. Left-leaning politicians, pundits and activists have often encouraged population control, for what they say is the solution to climate change and other planetary problems. In a recent interview with StarTalk Radio host Neil deGrasse Tyson, HBO Real Time host Bill Maher offered his suggestion.

"The planet is too crowded and we need to promote death.”

Maher isn’t alone in his extreme view. Here are some other like-minded personalities who think we need to control the number of people.

Canadian environmental activist Paul Watson:

“We need to radically and intelligently reduce human population to fewer than one billion. We need to eliminate nationalism and tribalism and become Earthlings. And as Earthlings, we need to recognize that all the other species that live on this planet are also fellow citizens and also Earthlings. This is a planet of incredible diversity of life-forms; it is not a planet of one species as many of us believe.”

New York Time's Columnist Thomas Friedman:

“Population growth and global warming push up food prices, which lead to political instability, which leads to higher oil prices, which leads to higher food prices, and so on in a vicious circle.”

University of Texas at Austin biology professor Eric R. Pianka:

“I do not bear any ill will toward people. However, I am convinced that the world, including all humanity, WOULD clearly be much better off without so many of us.”

Michael Fox, former vice-president of The Humane Society of the United States wrote:

"Mankind is the most dangerous, destructive, selfish and unethical animal on the earth."

Everyone’s favorite environmentalist, Al Gore:

"One of the things we could do about it is to change the technologies, to put out less of this pollution, to stabilize the population, and one of the principle ways of doing that is to empower and educate girls and women. You have to have ubiquitous availability of fertility management so women can choose how many children they have, the spacing of the children.

Bertrand Russell, in his book, "The Impact of Science on Society," wrote:

"At present the population of the world is increasing ... War so far has had no great effect on this increase... If a Black Death could be spread throughout the world once in every generation, survivors could procreate freely without making the world too full ... the state of affairs might be somewhat unpleasant, but what of it? Really high-minded people are indifferent to suffering, especially that of others."

Merton Lambert, former spokesman for the Rockefeller foundation:

“The world has a cancer, and that cancer is man.”

For Lambert and other pundits, the “cure” for the cancer of men and women is to slow the human race down to a crawl.